@[email protected] Yeah… the nasty thing about grooming is that the entire point is to get vulnerable people to really, really like the groomer.

Shio

@[email protected] Yeah… the nasty thing about grooming is that the entire point is to get vulnerable people to really, really like the groomer. Ashten went the extra mile to also provide a seemingly safe place for those people to be themselves. It’s hard to get out of that.

Amber

@[email protected] @[email protected] people are still arguing about the dm messages to the minor, as if we are solely working off of that in an isolated context. no, if it was completely a one off isolated incident then it'd be reasonable to go "ok weird, nothing too bad" but it's in combination with the fact that ashten was trying to get Allissa to move in with her, traveling across the United States... and then you look at the people around her such as Leah... the fact that Ashten knew about Hanna having esex with allissa and played it off... it starts to get harder and harder to justify. I keep seeing people take the chat logs as something that's an isolated incident. I don't understand, I've been pretty clear that every thing adds up and paints the bigger picture, not that one piece of evidence on itself is a smoking gun. People did this for the matrix too, saying "you defederated because of a matrix server" despite my protests.

The original defed was justified with the fact that at the time of writing we had no idea that Ashten herself had predatory behavior towards minors, but we knew that ashten is not fit to run a community. That having things like the matrix server which can be a significant mod load in itself when she cannot run a fedi instance without constantly getting in petty drama (see: the fedi meta account) or without putting people at risk (see: how she handled caitlin) that was enough of a justification. I'll admit, I fucked up by allowing mods to delete woem.men's counter claims on [email protected] before suspending the admin account... but at that point I had been going through days of victim blaming in which i watched people say "this is just a petty internet drama, nothing is substantial" and i watched mutuals unfollow me and I felt so gaslit. I'd say that was a pretty minor fuck up compared to the rest, sure our reasons weren't 100% strong but at the same time we had been dreading to post it and even though we knew it wasn't perfect - we posted it anyway.

Amber

@[email protected] @[email protected] something i find incredibly telling - notice how not once has she brought up Caitlin or luna. it wasn't in the "retort". she has been nitpicking to death minor things, trying to distract from the overall picture. https://yiff.life/@hyenagirl64/113677740143256577 one of my mutuals put it really well. I also heard through the grapevine apparently ashten had been telling people I convinced Julia to hate her, and that I was behind everything. I find it sickening. The fact that she had a "plan" for if this ever came to light - https://woem.men/notes/a1soxc4xd8en00e3. Just... So many things.

Amber

@[email protected] @[email protected] and people still try to pull the card of "I don't see it". I'm sorry but maybe if it was one person, but we're at 18+ instances most of them entirely independent of the first "wave" of instances that announced defeds. We have countless victims speaking up (and at least 3+ minors, now adults who have had terrible experiences). Yet fedi is still somehow unconvinced this is more than some petty internet drama.

Shio

@[email protected] @[email protected] A lot of people would rather close their eyes and pretend everything is petty and small instead of exit their comfort zone by accepting that this is a serious issue, I think.

Amber

@[email protected] @[email protected] this is one of the few situations that actively ignoring it and pretending it doesn't exist contributes to real harm. letting her get away with this by trying to argue to death over minor points. i think she's extremely manipulative. i am worried about all of the victims that stepped forward, expressing vulnerability. after seeing us all get attacked time and time again, called "clowns" by ashten and leah... seeing leah spreading misinformation about the sharkey project "erasing" her contributions... I just. I had to mute the word meta because it's so much. It's like, she is literally using cult talking points (us vs them - the evil transfem.social clique that's "slandering" me yet i won't go to court about it because that requires me proving intent and that the tf.s admin knew the statements were false). Seeing that sort of bogus legal threat, thank god that I am not naive because that's a lot of pressure to silence someone.

Amber

@[email protected] @[email protected] there's a very real chance for her to continue to harm people, and to manipulate them. this is beyond "admins don't agree" this is, an admin is posing an active risk to the community and other admins pulled out the nuclear option because there was no other chance. i spent months trying to address various things with her. before any of this went down.

Amber

@[email protected] @[email protected] "amber and her clique won't talk to me" gee i wonder why. i don't want to be in the same space as you much less a private group chat where you can attack me, belittle me and do god knows what else.

Ave Bardica :blackfire: :genderqueer_potion:

@puppygirlhornypost2 @[email protected] @[email protected] "We had a plan"
I really don't like that. Not one bit. There is implication to that, in the sense of "why exactly do you NEED a plan? What were you anticipating?"

Maybe that's me reading too much into it, but one doesn't make plans for eventualities if one doesn't expect to need to fight somebody.

Amber

@Bard @[email protected] @[email protected] yeah, no i agree. "we had a plan for if i was accused of grooming" nobody should have this.